MSR Thesis Defense
Engineer II
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

MSR Thesis Talk: Neil Khera

TBD

Title: PyCubed-Mini: A Low-Cost, Open-Source Satellite Research Platform   Abstract: Satellite development has become more accessible with decreasing launch costs and shrinking hardware. However, the expenses associated with pre-built satellite kits remain high, making it difficult for student and hobbyist teams to participate. The lack of standardized satellite hardware and software further adds to the challenge, [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Strategy assessment for solving rich physical problems

NSH 4305

Abstract: We present a framework that acts as an "intuitive physics reasoner" which takes in strategies expressed in natural language (whether from a human or LLM), and assesses their validity based on a physics knowledge library. We believe the ability to quickly determine whether a strategy is worth considering and allocating further resources to planning [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

MSR Thesis Talk: Siva Kailas

1305 Newell Simon Hall

Title: Multi-Robot Information Gathering for Spatiotemporal Environment Modelling Abstract: Learning to predict or forecast spatiotemporal (ST) environmental processes from a sparse set of samples collected autonomously is a difficult task from both a sampling perspective (collecting the best sparse samples) and from a learning perspective (predicting unseen locations or forecasting the next timestep). We investigate [...]

MSR Thesis Defense
MSR Alumna
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

MRS Thesis Talk: Ruijie Fu

Newell-Simon Hall 3305

Title: Towards Mechanical Communication in Multi-Agent Locomotive Systems: Principally Kinematic Robots on a Shared Platform Abstract: Many biological multi-agent systems exhibit a mechanism for information exchange among individuals known as mechanical communication, which leads to the emergence of collective behavior within the group. One such example is the swarming behavior of bacteria, where they form rafts [...]

Faculty Events

RI Faculty Business Meeting

Newell-Simon Hall 4305

Meeting for RI Faculty. Discussions include various department topics, policies, and procedures. Generally meets weekly.

Faculty Events
Assistant Professor
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Robot Learning, Wearable Sensing, and Teleoperation in Pursuit of Robotic Caregivers

Abstract Designing safe and reliable robotic assistance for caregiving is a grand challenge in robotics. A sixth of the United States population is over the age of 65 and in 2014 more than a quarter of the population had a disability. Robotic caregivers could positively benefit society; yet, physical robotic assistance presents several challenges and [...]

PhD Thesis Proposal
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Personalized Context-aware Affective Nonverbal Robot Feedback

NSH 1305

Abstract:  We first consider the problem of estimating context, specifically key features of the human state. We predict engagement-related events in an educational activity before the end of that activity, which could allow the robot to provide feedback early enough to improve the human's experience. We then explore generating nonverbal affective robot behavior by correlating [...]

Faculty Events

RI Faculty Business Meeting

Newell-Simon Hall 4305

Meeting for RI Faculty. Discussions include various department topics, policies, and procedures. Generally meets weekly.

PhD Thesis Defense
PhD Student
Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University

Redefining the Perception-Action Interface: Visual Action Representations for Contact-Centric Manipulation

GHC 6501

Abstract:  In robotics, understanding the link between perception and action is pivotal. Typically, perception systems process sensory data into state representations like  segmentations and bounding boxes, which a planner uses to plan actions. However, this state estimation approach can fail in environments with partial observability, and in cases with challenging object properties like transparency and deformability.  [...]